Lindsay Clancy‘s attorney is preparing to ask a judge to bar prosecutors from trying his client a second time. Clancy’s first murder trial ended in a mistrial after the jury couldn’t reach a unanimous verdict. Her attorney, Kevin Reddington, says the panel was deadlocked 11-1 in favor of acquitting her.
Speaking on “CBS Mornings,” Reddington repeated his claim that the single holdout juror never applied reasonable doubt the way he was supposed to.
Reddington, who had already tried and failed to get that juror removed mid-deliberation, said he’ll file paperwork ahead of a September 29 hearing aimed at blocking a retrial altogether. “It’ll be a motion to dismiss based on what’s called double jeopardy grounds,” Reddington said.
He added, “The term is manifest necessity. You have to have a manifest necessity to declare a mistrial for obvious reasons: the time that the jurors put into it, the court, the staff, the defendant, the prosecution, everybody.”
Reddington Floats Presidential Intervention, Even A Pardon
6Reddington didn’t stop at double jeopardy. He also floated the idea of presidential intervention, even though Clancy’s case is a state matter with no obvious path to a pardon. He told “CBS Mornings” he’d go as far as appealing to “the king of England” for help if it would move things along.
He pointed to public comments President Trump has made about the case as proof the president is already tracking it, and suggested Trump could easily ask someone on his team to look into it, something Reddington described as eventually “trickling down” to DA Cruz.
Asked whether it would even be appropriate for the president to weigh in on a state prosecution, Reddington’s answer was blunt: he said he “don’t really care,” so long as it helps get Clancy’s case resolved.
Clancy’s Attorney Says The Holdout Juror Ignored The Judge’s Instructions
6He says he isn’t disputing the juror’s right to stand his ground, just whether that juror actually followed the judge’s instructions. “But when the forelady indicated clearly and unequivocally in the jury question that this person had doubt, reasonable doubt as we know now, and just refused to listen to the judge’s instruction on the law, that’s when I was upset because that’s when I used the expressions and the terms that I did that it just wasn’t right,” Reddington said.
A Week of Deadlock Ends In A Mistrial
6Jurors spent roughly a week behind closed doors before telling Judge William Sullivan they were stuck. Sullivan declared a mistrial over Reddington’s objections; he wanted deliberations to keep going.
Clancy has never denied killing her three children, Cora, 5, Dawson, 3, and 8-month-old Callan. She’s pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder on the grounds that she lacked criminal responsibility. Her defense says postpartum psychosis and overmedication were behind the strangulations and her apparent suicide attempt afterward, when she jumped from a second-story window.
Prosecutors argue the killings were deliberate. They haven’t said whether they’ll pursue a new trial.
Cruz Defends The Prosecution, Stays Silent On A Retrial
6District Attorney Timothy J. Cruz addressed the case outside the courthouse and turned the focus back to the three kids. He defended the decision to prosecute in the first place but wouldn’t commit to a retrial.
Cruz called the case the “cruel, calculated killings of three innocents,” speaking from a podium outside Plymouth Superior Court, and acknowledged how hard the trial was on everyone involved. “This was an emotional trial for everybody, the Duxbury community, members of the media,” Cruz said.
He also singled out prosecutors Jennifer Sprague and Shanan Buckingham, noting they’re “both mothers themselves.”
Prosecution Never Wavered From Seeking Justice For The Children
6Sprague and Buckingham spent weeks trying to convince jurors that Clancy understood what she was doing, and that it was wrong, when she strangled her children in the family’s Duxbury home on January 24, 2023. The defense held that postpartum psychosis meant she shouldn’t be held criminally responsible. The mistrial left that core question unanswered.
Cruz insisted the case was never about anything but the children. “I bring it all back to the child victims in this case; this was and has always been about getting justice for those three little babies,” he said. “We are here at this courthouse today because those children are not.”
Clancy, charged with three counts of first-degree murder, doesn’t dispute killing Cora, Dawson and Callan. Her lawyers argue her mental illness was severe enough that she couldn’t grasp the wrongfulness of what she was doing or control her actions. Prosecutors tell a different story, alleging she deliberately engineered time alone with the kids while her then-husband, Patrick Clancy, was out picking up medicine and dinner.
